


squint your eyes (and hope real hard)

by nagia



Series: O Tower Not Ivory [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Zevran Arainai as Inquisitor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:08:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This Inquisition business is for the birds. Well, crows, specifically. <i>or:</i> Zevran wakes up in chains, in prison, apparently dying, and with a total stranger shouting at him.  Alas, it's not even Tuesday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	squint your eyes (and hope real hard)

The dungeon Zevran wakes in is a touch more impressive than those hours he spent crawling through the bowels of Redcliffe Castle, so many years ago. For one, Zevran is actually a prisoner here. For another, they were wise enough to lock his hands away in a metal stock, rather than in manacles. Someone must have told them that he would be a danger if he had a chain to use.

Most importantly, he doesn't know of any fairy stories about mysterious green lights in anybody's hands. Whatever new nonsense he's fallen into, he can at least say that.

His first order of business had been to check for injuries. As he'd found none save the light in his hand, he'd gone on to search himself for his lockpicks. It had been an awkward business, involving much fluid stretching that his joints and muscles disagreed with. They disagreed quite strenuously, and he was annoyed to find his search in vain; even the hidden set of tools strapped to his calves had been taken from him.

Now, Zevran looks down at his left hand, which means also looking at the stock. He turns his wrist within the cuff, flexing his fingers and staring into his palm. The green light awakens, setting his whole hand ablaze in a feeling that is too complicated to be pain. It is hot, in a sense, a heat that does not burn, but it is not sharp, or red, as a cut. There is no bluntness to the feeling here, no dull ache of a broken bone.

His hand has simply come alive in a way that he has never, in his years as a Crow or after, experienced before. Not in his hand, at least. The closest he can come to categorizing it is to say "over-sensitive" or "over-used," as in the aftermath of love. A ridiculous comparison at best, he knows, but one he must let stand.

His captors have left him just slightly too much room in that cuff, he concludes as he turns his wrist over again. Were he a mage, he is sure he could do a great deal of damage, still. This could not have been intentional. He must lay the blame upon his fine bones and slender frame; alas for them, he is delicate as a mushroom, as he took to saying years ago.

The sound of boots upon stone draws his attention away from hand and wrist. In fact, it quite jerks his mind out of its contemplation of his many woes. He is at last to learn the identities of his captors! Useful information, that. If he can learn who they are, then he may yet find some idea of what they _want_. And with those pieces of knowledge, he will be free to go on his way in no time.

The door bangs open. Zevran winces very briefly at the sudden bright light that very nearly blinds him. There are perks to being an elf, however, and one of those is the way his eyes adjust swifter to the light. They certainly adjust swifter to the sudden brightness than his captors' do to the darkness in his cell, for though their movements are economical, he sees a certain haphazardness to them.

Soldiers, and not entirely well-trained ones. Their faces are grim, their armor mismatched, and he sees a couple of swords that are horrifyingly notched. He is almost sad for how little respect they've shown the chief tool of their trade. One of them is slower on the draw as he moves to stand behind Zevran's left shoulder.

These cannot be the men in charge. No, they are simple guards, and piss poor ones, too. He makes a mental note to have a friendly word with their superior officer, provided he doesn't kill his way out of here. He has a ship to Kirkwall to board, after all, the last ship in Denerim that Alistair will permit to sail there.

A woman strides into the room. Zevran tilts his head a moment, studying her. Her features are lovely, in a stern fashion. Her jaw juts out in a way he finds endearingly stubborn, reminding him of every Fereldan he's ever met, and a few dwarves.

Her immediate action is to circle around behind him. An attempt to unnerve him, surely, but he has no doubt the real threat is the pack of soldiers who will try to skewer him if he makes one wrong move. He allows his lips to curve into a smirk, and stares straight forward, making no move to keep track of her position. She may not know it — indeed, she probably doesn't know it — but her feet moving across the stone tell him where she is as clearly as he could need.

The woman who walks in after her, however, is more of a shock, and for a moment, he stops paying attention to the first.

Leliana. He would know her by her walk, graceful and unobtrusive, even if he couldn't see the burn of her eyes and the fragile roundness of her cheeks beneath that hood. They had been something like friends, once, and now, she takes him prisoner?

Still. He knows nothing of his predicament, save that his hands are bound and he's on a hard stone floor somewhere in Ferelden, and with so many blades drawn, he does not dare risk playing the friend with her. So as she looks down at him, he looks back up at her.

The first one to speak is the woman with the stern, stubborn face. "Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now."

He almost does speak, then. But she continues, before he so much as opens his mouth: "The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead…"

She circles back around, into his view, and then leans in. Her voice is harsh when she finishes with, "Except for you."

The words are a shock that would make him reel, were he not already on his knees. He forces himself not to react at all to the news, though he begins to sort through his purpose for being at the Conclave and what he recalls of the final moments before he awoke here. Everyone being dead rather changes things.

And means, unless he misses his guess, that he needs to get to that ship in Denerim's port. Soon.

The woman leans down and grabs him by the stock, trying to shove his hand into his face. Zevran would be amused, if she weren't trying so earnestly to be threatening.

"Explain this," she demands.

Zevran looks to her for a moment, and then past her, to Leliana.

"I have no idea what it is," he says, simply. "I recall nothing of it."

"What do you mean you don't know—" The woman reaches down to grip him by the shoulders, begins to try to shake him.

He considers headbutting her in the throat. It would do nothing to win his freedom, and truly, he has no wish to be skewered by poorly disciplined soldiers, but it might teach her about getting too close to a prisoner dangerous enough to be in stocks. Then again, if she has not learned such a lesson, why should he be the one to teach her?

Leliana has the wisdom to move the woman away from him, saying, "We need him, Cassandra."

Nothing about the fact that they used to be friends. She, too, must believe he is somehow responsible for the deaths of all at the Conclave. He would almost find it flattering, really. That's a very large number of people to kill in one week without taking a single wound save the one in his palm.

He chooses to say none of this. Instead, he replies, "I mean I don't know. The last I recall, before I woke up on the floor of a rather filthy cell, I must protest, I was being chased by—" Darkspawn. Darkspawn, wearing faces he knew all too well. "— _Creatures_. There was a woman, reaching out. I did not know her. Now, I am here, and there is a green fire in my hand."

It occurs to him, now, that so far as he can tell, she's said nothing of Zevran being consort to the Hero of Ferelden, or a good friend to King Alistair. He doesn't know if he should be grateful or worried.

Leliana looks down at him for a moment that seems to stretch. Zevran shifts where he sits, gathering his knees under him so he can at least spring away should he need. Long stares when people are holding blades ready make him uneasy.

"Go to the forward camp, Cassandra," Leliana says. Her eyes never leave Zevran's face.

"But Leliana," Cassandra begins, grating voice bouncing in echoes off the stone walls. 

She doesn't get to finish her thought. Leliana cuts her off with a sharp gesture of her chin, a movement Zevran remembers from the later days of the Blight, when the Orlesian bard had begun to crack the shell of the Chantry Sister.

"It's best if I show him. You don't know him as I do, Cassandra."

"He is one of the Blight companions!" Cassandra says this as if she is just realizing it, and she turns her whole body toward him. She's back across the room before Leliana can stop her, leaning down to stare Zevran in the face. "You! Have _you_ heard from the Hero of Ferelden? Or did you murder her, too?"

He had been about to smile and say nothing, because to do so would have amused him — he is a very a bad man, everyone says so — but at that last question, he feels his temper rise. He only barely masters the urge to headbutt her. He makes sure to wipe any expression from his face, any color from his voice.

"I _suggest_ ," he says, and it is no suggestion, "that you rethink that last. My flaws are many, I do not deny them, but murdering my _wife_ is not one of them." He pauses, to make very sure there can be no mistakes of his meaning, and then adds, "I will not warn you again."

His shift from pleasant and polite to this serious calm seems to take Cassandra aback. She narrows her eyes at him, but before she can reply, Leliana cuts in.

From behind Cassandra, Leliana says, softly, dangerously, "Cassandra. Enough. I'll handle him." There's an edge in her voice that manages both to repeat her order and to warn all present that she does not like to repeat herself.

The taller woman lets out a snort of disgust, but she turns on her heel and leaves. Leliana jerks her chin, and the soldiers follow her out, into the light.

"You don't even need me to unlock those, do you?" Leliana asks with a sigh, once the door slams closed, leaving them with bare, guttering torch flames to see by.

Zevran laughs. "If you hadn't taken my second set of picks, perhaps." He rises to his feet, a little creakier than he used to be but no less smoothly than he ever has, and holds his arms out. "I wish I could say it was good to see you, Leliana."

She unlocks the stock and drops it on the floor. Unfortunately, she then retrieves thick rope from within a satchel at her waist. Her fingers are swift and nimble as she ties his wrists together, and when he tests the knots, he find them slightly better than they were ten years ago.

"I wish I could, too." She sounds so sad that it worries him. "The Divine is _dead_ , and by virtue of being the only survivor of the Conclave, you…"

He's going to have Crows after him again. Zevran has no doubt of this. The better question is whether the Crows will get to him first, or whether Leliana is going to march him to the gibbet. 

"I make a convenient scapegoat." He follows her to the door, then through the lower level of some sort of dungeon. They exit through a Chantry, but it's no Chantry he's ever seen before. Zevran looks around it, turning as he does, but though it's undoubtedly Fereldan — and was set on fire during the Blight, judging by the scorch marks on the stone walls — he can say nothing clearer of it.

He notes that Leliana has neither admitted him to be a scapegoat nor denied it. She is sure, then, of neither his innocence nor his guilt. They are both sure, very sure, that with the Conclave ended the south's last chance for peace.

Still. Better for him to try and stay friendly, for as long as he can. "Where are we?" He asks.

"Haven," Leliana replies. She pauses, then turns to look at him a moment. "That's right. You — joined us after Haven, on our way to Redcliffe."

"I did!" He agrees. "Is this the Chantry where they worshiped the dragon?"

A wry smile, with the same shade of sadness that he sometimes feels thinking of the madness of the Blight. "Yes and no. We burned the town. This was… reclaimed."

"They even repaired its prison?" Zevran feels his eyes stretch wide. "Why would they — ah, rowdy pilgrims? Leliana, you let a pack of soldiers in jackboots carry me into the drunk pit?" He doesn't bother hiding the scandalized tone from his voice.

She just flicks a look back at him, over her shoulder. Her hips sway just a little extra as she leads him toward the doors, but it makes her movements look more confident, rather than more feminine. To his eye, at least. She keeps her head high, and though the people in the Chantry eye him as they pass, none gainsay his freedom.

Outside the Chantry — 

There is a hole in the world. _Cazzo_ , it's a fucking huge hole, right there in the sky. It's green, like the mark on his hand, and he could swear that if they built a ladder high enough, he could climb in and fall forever. He has seen horrors and wonders, but he has never seen this.

"What," he demands, "is that?"

Leliana is silent for a moment, staring, too at this void in the sky. "We are calling it the Breach. As best we can tell, it opens into the Fade."

The Fade. Mother of Mercy. He clenches his left fist, feeling the nerves wake as the fire rises once again. 

"It opened three days ago, immediately after the Temple of the Sacred Ashes was laid waste. Since then…" Leliana shrugs one shoulder, not so much helpless as resigned. "Demons." She says it in a tone that almost asks what can be done about it: as happens when the Fade opens its mouth wide, it's spitting demons into the world. What could they expect?

Demons are not Zevran's idea of a fun party game. He has, in fact, seen more than enough of demons. He can also all too easily imagine how the people who have _not_ fought and killed them before are reacting. How many of them are dying, at this very moment.

"Can it be closed?" He asks.

"We don't know yet." She says it slowly, so slowly, that he might almost think the words are being dragged from her throat. This is an admission that costs her.

Well and so, he's stared into the face of the end of the world. And then he watched a tiny elven woman pick up a greatsword and cut its head off. If the sky cannot be closed, surely there must be some way to shore it up? He is not going to die because of a hole in the world.

His eyes fall back to the green light on his hand, but he says nothing of the suspicions that are just now beginning to crawl into his thoughts. He sees Leliana's eyes dart there, as well, and no words need to pass between them. Her purpose in allowing him from his cell has just become clear.

They always did understand each other, he and Leliana.

He quickly turns his gaze back to the people around him. Leliana leads him through a town with a few stone buildings but that is mostly made of wood. Now that he looks at it, he can see clearly how much of it seems not to quite fit the lay of the land, how much of it just seems to have been propped up as swiftly as settlers could manage. He can't exactly blame them; Ferelden can be a bitter place to try to live.

Zevran does rather want to blame the townspeople, though, for the way their eyes linger on him. He watches hands tense on tools, jaws drawing tight.

"They are convinced of my guilt, I see," he mutters to Leliana as they make their way across a bridge, toward a heavy wooden gate.

Leliana's reply is a quiet, "Someone has to be guilty." He hears more in the words: someone has to pay.

They've just passed from the bridge and onto a muddy, icy path when Leliana cuts the binds on his hands. He can't help but laugh a little at the look of annoyance she flashes up at him. He'd worked his thumb beneath one of the knots, and though he hadn't unravelled it, if she'd allowed him five minutes more — 

"I'm sorry," he says. "I know I'm terrible. I just can't help it. Professional habit."

"You would have been gone from here the minute Cassandra turned her back on you," Leliana sighs.

"And that is why you, clever woman, were the one to escort me from the cells." He looks up. "Shall we go to this Breach? I admit I still know little of magic, but…" He flexes the fingers of his left hand.

"I assume that if you manage to seal it, you'll want to be on your way."

"As much as I enjoy seeing you, there is much I must yet do. Alistair has —"

"He'd want you to take care of this," Leliana says, her voice piercing the air of friendship they've been cultivating. For the first time, she's letting her grief show. "And Sens would, too. If you can fix any part of this…"

Zevran is silent for long enough that his hand blazes again. It's so sudden that he's unprepared for it, and not prepared for the pain that strikes. He fixes his gaze on the sky and breathes through it.

"The mark is killing you," she adds, so soft he almost doesn't hear her.

Because of course it is. Killing him, chewing away at him slowly, taking its leisurely, burning bites. Like the Blight corruption eats at his Warden?

Not now, when he actually has things to live for. Not when they both might finally — 

Zevran simply tilts his head and smiles for her, though it's a wry twist of a look. "Ah, alas, Leliana. Such is life. We all die sometime."

#

There seem to be quite a lot of bridges in these mountains. Leliana leads him to another bridge over yet another frozen stream — Maker, how is there _more_ snow? He thought winter in Ferelden just meant snow and frozen mud — and sorts through a few small crates of supplies before she tosses a pair of peace-bound sheaths in his direction. Zevran breaks the peace knots immediately, of course, and slides one of the daggers from the scabbard.

Not brand new, but not noticeably notched, and with a decent enough balance.

"What did you do with my dagger and longsword?" He's quite fond of them. They'd been a gift upon him becoming bann of Soldier's Peak; Mikail Dryden had forged them himself on a commission.

Leliana's only response is a secretive smile. Zevran represses a sigh; if he knows her at all, then he won't be seeing them again until she's convinced he won't try to run away. This is just one of the many problems of making friendships, he supposes. A man's friends can get to know him, get to know that he won't leave a gift from his wife in the hands of the Chantry if he can possibly help it.

Not that his weapons being hidden will be a large reason behind him staying, and he knows that Leliana knows that, too. Not much good running away from this new-forged alliance of the Divine's Hands if almost every government in Thedas thinks he murdered the Divine.

He doesn't get a chance to remind her of any of this or to demand that they be returned to him after he tries his hand at sealing the Breach. He has no words for what happens next save to say that the sky contracts, and the world convulses. The crackling candle flame of his hand roars to life, bright as a torch, painful as a bonfire lit in his palm, and he catches sight of the barest hint of a flash.

And then the bridge collapses. It starts with a shaking feeling underground, but he doesn't actually _hear_ the grind of stone against stone until after the wind has stopped whistling in his ears. He hits the ground with hip and shoulder both and feels his breath whoosh out of him. He winces at the sudden bursts of pain, swift and red, but he forces himself to his feet nonetheless.

Unsheathing the daggers Leliana gave him as he stands is simple instinct, trained into him before he turned ten.

He's glad of it, too, because he finds himself rather closer to a pair of Shades than he'd ordinarily like to be. He surges forward, flinging himself slightly to the left in a minuet-step.

He hears an arrow sing past him as he takes another minuet-step, but he pays it no mind. Instead, he shifts his grip on his dagger and plunges it downward, even as he cuts low with the other. The Shade makes a noise that reminds him of a shriek, though the voice is like none he's heard in the waking world.

A full waltz step, another cut, another shriek. The Shade tries to turn around, and he puts the dagger through its eye, then turns to the Shade that Leliana had been shooting at. He hears it burst into ash with a sound like a puff of air.

He hears the creak of her bowstring and launches himself forward. His hip and shoulder object to the swift, easy roll, but he ignores them. An arrow hisses, even as he's driving his right-hand dagger forward and up. It strikes it in what would be the throat, on an elf or human, even as his dagger slides home into what should be the gut.

The Shadow explodes all over him, leaving him covered in snow and ash. It could be worse. It could be the truly disgusting mixture of mud, dog hair, and Darkspawn blood he'd spent most of the Blight wearing. Still, he rubs at his eyes with the inside of his wrists and spits ash onto the ground, sparing a half-hearted glare for Leliana.

She shrugs, utterly indifferent, and takes only a moment to re-orient herself before she starts leading him ahead. Back on course for the Breach. And that's assuming they actually left their course at all.

He notices as they move forward that Leliana still uses her same trick for walking on ice. The steeper the incline, the more careful her steps become. She turns her leading foot just slightly and begins to push more with her trailing, bending the knee a little more to provide power and keep her balance.

Zevran watches her for a few minutes before he imitates her. It isn't the way he walks in Denerim or Amaranthine, but he doesn't spend much time trying to walk on sheets of ice in Ferelden's northern cities.

They haven't gone more than a few hundred paces when the mountains begin to carry new sound to them. Ice-encrusted valleys seem to be generous with noise. He'd rather expected the snow and the trees to silence the world around him, but he catches the sound of men shouting, of bodies colliding with shields and bowstrings singing.

"Ah, such a familiar sound, that," he says. "Who are the forces?"

"You'll see," Leliana says. But her tricky ice walking turns into tricky ice running, and she's pulling arrow from quiver with the same ease she'd had when last they fought together.

Honestly, not dying has started to matter too much to him for this habit of jumping into other people's fights, sorting out friend and foe with his daggers. And yet that's precisely what he does: he follows Leliana into what looks like a pitched fight of Fereldan men in armor, an elven mage, a dwarf with a familiar crossbow that Zevran is going to have to steal and give to Nathaniel, and a great deal of Shades. There are even a few creatures he doesn't recognize — yellowy wisps, vaguely person-shaped.

The demons seem to be coming from a strange shape in the air. It looks almost like crystal, and yet it's clearly a ribbon of light. 

Zevran ignores it in favor of striking out at the demons. He knows these men not at all, but he doesn't need to know them to fall into a rhythm. Cut, cut, whirl away to another enemy. Another couple of cuts, and then he's dodging away. Somewhere to his right, the crossbow sings, and the elven mage is striking out with ice and lightning, a combination so familiar he spares a moment to miss Sens.

But no bears roar, and he doesn't hear Oghren cursing.

He's standing near the elven mage when he stabs the last Shade, one strike downward into the back, and one strike upward into the side. The Shade explodes into ash, just like all the rest, but before Zevran can sheathe his knives, the mage's hand snaps out.

And closes around Zevran's left wrist.

Zevran doesn't even think before he half-turns into the cross-body grip and lashes out with his right-hand dagger, reaching automatically to drive it into the stranger's thigh.

His hand stops halfway to its target. 

The knives fall from his grasp at the fresh burn in his palm, every nerve awoken anew. He's suddenly hyper aware of the small scrapes and cuts to his hand that are the result of wielding a knife in battle with no glove to protect him, and aware, too, of the cold air on his skin. 

The light in his hand sends shockwaves up his arm all the way to his jaw. It hurts to have fingernails. It hurts to have teeth.

"Quickly!" The mage says, and then adds something else, but Zevran doesn't hear him. He's too focused on his hand and the thing in front of him.

A glowing leash connects the light in his hand to the ribbon-crystal-magical thing in the air. And, as he watches, the ribboncrystal shrinks, growing smaller, and smaller. Little, and less, and finally, it's nothing.

The sudden loss of pain is as shocking as it was when it first struck, and he jerks backward, pulling his hand from the mage's grasp.

Zevran turns to the mage and asks, "What, exactly, did you just do?"

"I," the mage replies, "did nothing. The credit is yours."

Zevran looks down at his suddenly traitorous palm. "You would not _believe_ how relieved I am to hear that this is good for something."

That draws a hint of a smile from the other elf. "I'm equally glad to learn I was right. Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand. I theorized that the mark might close the rifts that have opened in the Breach's wake."

From behind them, Leliana says, "You think it could close the Breach." 

Zevran turns slightly and sees her approaching. She's slung her bow back over her back, but her eyes are bright and alert, scanning the horizon for signs of trouble. As she moves, the soldiers present cross both arms over their chests — the standard Fereldan salute — and bow slightly.

"It's possible," the mage allows. "It would seem you hold the key to our salvation."

Zevran is not often made speechless. But those words do the trick. He's not sure where to begin to frame a reply. There are so many, many ways this man must be wrong. Is the man joking? Mad?

Fortunately, Zevran doesn't have to say anything, because the dwarf chooses to say, "Good to know." He begins moving toward them, adjusting the way his coat covers his shirtcuffs. He must have stowed the crossbow when Zevran was busy sealing the rift. 

"Here I thought we'd be ass deep in demons forever," the dwarf adds. "Varric Tethras. Rogue, storyteller, and — starting to feel like we've met before."

"I could swear that I know your crossbow." Zevran grins at him. "Zevran Arainai. Rogue, assassin, and friend to the Grey Wardens in Ferelden."

"Everybody remembers Bianca," Varric says, grinning back. "We've been through a lot together." He pauses, eying Zevran, and then snaps his fingers. "I knew I'd seen that tattoo before! You're Isabela's friend."

Zevran touches his fingers to the two black curves along his cheek. Unfortunately for him, tattoos are much rarer in the south, and facial tattoos are almost unheard of, outside the Dalish. It makes him more memorable than he'd like. But he supposes that's worked to his advantage here.

"An old friend of hers, yes," he agrees. "Good to see you again."

"You'll be gladder to see me once we head into the valley. It's gotten nasty out there."

That startles Leliana. "So you're coming with us?"

Varric replies, swiftly and easily, "Sure I am. You need me. You'll need Chuckles over there, too." When it looks like she might object further, he adds, "Have you been in the valley, lately, Nightingale? The soldiers aren't in control anymore."

His argument silences Leliana. She straightens her posture a touch as she falls silent, and the mage adds, as if sensing the tension, "My name is Solas, actually, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live."

"He means, 'I kept that mark from killing you while you slept.'" Varric offers a wry grin, even as he turns just enough to keep both Solas and Leliana in his field of vision.

Zevran tuns back to Solas. "It would seem I owe you a debt. I thank you."

As so many people of Zevran's acquaintance do, Solas waves the thanks away. He, at least, adds, "Thank me if we manage to close the Breach without killing you in the process."

Rather than consider how distinctly unpleasant that sounds, and inform Leliana of how sad this whole affair makes him — and how much he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere else — Zevran laughs. "Well, I won't be able to thank you properly if I die. Let's see to it that I don't, hm?"

Solas offers him the barest hint of a smile. A scrap of amusement, really, but Zevran lived much of his childhood from scraps. He turns to Leliana, though, and says, "Sister Leliana, you are aware your prisoner is no mage."

She looks sidelong at Zevran, then inclines her head. "I know, yes. You don't think he's responsible for the Breach?"

"The magic here is unlike any I have seen. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such power. I find it unlikely that your prisoner has caused this."

Leliana is looking a touch too stiff for his liking, Zevran notices. He flashes them all a smile, sunny as he can, and adds, "Which does not explain my survival." 

The hole in the sky draws his attention once more. He returns his gaze to it, tracing the dark shapes within the green.

Strange, to know that though he remembers being in the Fade — hard to forget that nightmare — he does not remember the Fade itself. For what he remembers had looked nothing like that, to him: he had seen a stone chamber, the very one he had dreaded in his youth.

"Perhaps we'll find answers in the Temple," Solas offers.

Zevran smiles. "Perhaps we will. Apologies for the near stabbing, by the way. I have my flaws, and they are many, but I do not _usually_ tread so close to being a thug."

Ahead of them, Varric is shaking his head. "You're all crazy. At least Bianca's excited, I guess."

"Oh, good! I love enthusiasm. Builds team spirit, I find."

#

They encounter no more rifts on the trip further up into the mountains. Zevran wonders if this is the path that Genitivi led them on. It surely can't be; from what Leliana had said of the experience, Brother Genitivi had been injured. Injured, and then — 

Well, Sens hadn't wanted Haven or the Temple found. Leliana had been horrified as she told the story, but Zevran had rather approved. It had given him heart, to know that though they had proven merciful in his case, the last Grey Wardens of Ferelden could and would do whatever they felt necessary.

Honestly, the pity is less that Genitivi died of a knife to the back of the head, and more that he died for nothing. The secret is out, after all.

They find their next rift right outside a closed gate before yet another damnable bridge. Zevran almost sighs, but their party leaps into the fray, nonetheless. Zevran more than plays his part, hacking and cutting.

The good thing about fighting demons, rather than Darkspawn: they don't get blood on him.

That's about the only good thing.

Zevran darts away from Solas as he takes down the last demon. Before Solas can reach for him, Zevran extends his left hand. There may possibly be a touch of flailing as he tries to find whatever it was that awoke the mark in his hand. He will certainly never admit to flailing; he is graceful, always.

The mark wakes. He gasps for breath at how sudden the agony is. But it is no worse than a lashing, and certainly not as bad as a turn upon the rack. He steadies his gaze on the rift, with its swirling ribbons of light, aimless as sunlight over water, and breathes through the pain.

The rift closes.

One of the soldiers bows to him as they head toward the gate. Zevran nods back, a gesture he'd always found a touch imperious. But the soldier raises no objection. Perhaps it really is as gracious as Sens says he looks.

The gates open. 

And Cassandra, Zevran notes, is shouting at somebody else now. She seems like a woman who likes shouting. Perhaps she was a sergeant, before the Conclave?

He almost tsks at what he sees when they draw closer, and it's easier to draw his attention from the various armed men hustling about the bridge. She is arguing with a cleric. Zevran notes, out of habit, that the man wears the Orlesian frock, rather than the Fereldan: red and white, rather than the pink and gold he's more used to seeing in Denerim and Amaranthine.

Politically, the Divine's Hands and their purpose are becoming more and more interesting. Even if he weren't already in the eye of the storm, so to speak, he might well have decided to stay and investigate. It's always nice when one's king owes him a favor.

"Here they are," Cassandra says. "You made good time. Chancellor Roderick, this is —"

"I know well who he is," the cleric says. The man's grim tone unnerves Zevran rather less than the idea he's been recognized in a place he's never even visited. He folds his arms over his chest, perhaps under the impression it makes him look stern rather than like he has the heart-burn. "Seeker, as Grand Chancellor of the Chantry, I order you to take this criminal to Val Royeaux to face execution."

Well, there's a great deal to be learned from this. First, that this alliance has attracted the attention of at least one highly-placed person in the Chantry. Second, that Cassandra is a Seeker of Truth, an order Zevran has heard only a little of over the years. Sens had never spoken highly of them when they were mentioned to her, but then, Sens rarely spoke highly of the Chantry.

Third, they actually intend to execute him for the murder of the Divine. That charge is going to wear very, very thin, and soon. Killing the Divine herself would not have been a problem, of course. But getting past the Knights-Divine and the Knight-Vigilant? That would have been a worthy challenge, if he had been remotely interested in killing an old woman, destroying what might well have been the south's last chance for peace between mages and templars, and having himself branded the vilest creation under the Maker's sun since Maferath.

Cassandra's response is equally enlightening: "Order _me_? You're a glorified clerk! A bureaucrat!"

"And you are a thug! But a thug who supposedly serves the Chantry!"

So, they don't entirely have the support of the Chantry. On one hand, this may make matters easier, both for Ferelden and himself, when the time comes. On the other, he doesn't much like being the hands of… what, a splinter faction? A cult? If the last ten years have taught him anything, it's that cults are best avoided.

It's Leliana who intervenes in the conversation now. Her voice is icy and dangerous when she speaks, and Zevran receives the impression that this is a reminder the chancellor won't receive again. "We serve the Most Holy, chancellor. As you well know."

"Justinia is dead!" Roderick snaps, turning on her as easily a cavalryman wheels in his saddle to deliver a cut to a soldier's throat, "we must elect a replacement and obey _her_ orders on the matter!"

Orders which might well not include Zevran's execution, he almost points out. He also almost points out that this breakdown in leadership is not good for getting things done. He doesn't care who, but someone capable of longterm planning who is not a bureaucrat should be making some damned decisions, and the able-handed should be pitching in to enact them.

What he does instead is point at the Breach and say, "My friend, in Antiva, we would call that _un cazzo di enorme buco nel cielo_. Shouldn't we fix it before we do anything else?"

He hears Solas or Varric snort back a laugh. Leliana makes no noise, but Zevran knows her, and knows that she knows exactly what he said. Ahead of them, Cassandra furrows her brow very slightly, likely using whatever Orlesian she speaks to piece together what he just said.

Roderick rounds on Zevran, pointing furiously, if likely impotently. "You brought this on us in the first place! Can you not still your tongue, out of contrition for your evil act?"

Zevran closes his mouth, though not out of guilt for his ill deeds. No, instead, that is simply an amount of madness he doesn't want to have to talk to. He has a policy about that level of hostile crazy: no good ever comes of arguing with it.

However Roderick interprets Zevran's silence, he turns back to Cassandra and adds, almost pleading, "Call a retreat, Seeker. Our position here is hopeless."

Cassandra firms her jaw again, and replies, "You do not command the soldiers, and I say this valley is not yet lost."

"Then bring the Commander in from the field. He was a templar; perhaps _he_ will listen to reason."

Zevran just barely manages not to laugh at that. He's never heard of templars retreating from a field of demons. Even that bear-like Knight-Commander fellow in the Ferelden Circle, ten years and more ago, had only retreated in wait for reinforcements. Had they arrived, he would have gone charging right back into the Tower and slain everything there.

Leliana and Cassandra share a look. Evidently, they share Zevran's opinion on the matter, most likely bolstered by personal knowledge of the man.

Still, Leliana adds, "Not so hopeless as we were. The mark can seal rifts."

The words sink home with Cassandra. He can see it immediately. Her jaw relaxes just slightly and the rigid posture of spine and shoulders eases.

"Then we can stop this before it's too late. There will be no retreat, chancellor." 

"How? This path is lost. You won't survive long enough to reach the Temple, even with all your soldiers."

"In my experience, there is always another entrance." And another exit, but Zevran doesn't mention that. "Is there no other way up the mountain save this path?"

Leliana says, slightly thoughtful but with body language that's no less wary, "The dragon cult had tunnels all through these mountains. Zevran and a few companions could use them, and leave the surface path for the soldiers."

"Too slow, and we'll lose too many of the soldiers." Cassandra tenses again.

And, ah, here is the Leliana he has missed, after a fashion. He'd assumed this Leliana forever lost, when she'd rejoined the Chantry in the wake of victory in Denerim, but no, here she is, saying, "Soldiers can be replaced. That mark… we cannot risk losing it. It is terrible, but we must serve the greater good."

"What do _you_ make of this?" Cassandra asks, turning to Zevran.

"I think that I'm a prisoner here, and that people want to execute me for a crime I am, for once, innocent of. Why do I suddenly have some say in matters?"

"You have the mark," Solas says. His tone is too matter-of-fact, too much an easy answer to a question without easy answers, for the fact that they're standing on a snow-dusted bridge in mountains long forsaken by man and Maker and there's a damned hole in the world. He sounds to Zevran like a man who had lost all hope, and only newly regained it.

Cassandra adds, as easily as if this should be self-evident, "You close rifts. It is you we must keep alive." At least until the Breach is closed, he assumes. After that, they'll cheerfully execute him, he has no doubt.

"If the choice is to be mine, then I say I'll take the tunnels." They don't have nearly enough chains lying about to force him to charge headlong up a mountain alongside soldiers with ill-sharpened swords.

#

The tunnels are a test of his patience. Particularly since Cassandra joins them for the trip, arming herself with sword and shield, after speaking to a man Zevran only glimpses from a distance. The only thing remotely notable about the man from twenty paces away is the massive ruff of brown fur he wears about his shoulders. A Fereldan, Zevran thinks, and dismisses the conversation entirely.

After that, they climb for an hour through stone channels that occasionally bear demons. The torch Zevran carries gutters constantly; evidently, being underground does not protect them from the damnable mountain winds. The winds themselves seem to twine through the mountain, calling out in sharp, agonized echoes. Once, they blow the torch completely out, and, rather than fumble with flint, Zevran turns and thrusts it at Solas.

"You can light this, can you not?" He asks.

Solas looks surprised, canting a glance at Cassandra before he reaches out and, with two fingers, calls forth just enough fire to light it again.

Zevran thanks him, which earns him another faintly surprised look, and then they return to the business of climbing a mountain from the inside. If this is the path Sens and her other companions used during the Blight, he thinks he has a fuller picture of why she chose to burn Haven to the ground after she'd retrieved the Ashes. 

Once they finally leave the dark, cramped closeness and step onto the mountain top, beneath the open sky, he breathes in deeply.

And then, of course, they have to save a few scouts from demons. Why not? Saving people seems to be what everyone thinks he's good at these days. Still, he turns his head to watch them go, then wipes the ash from his daggers.

The temple is only a brief walk away, and he honestly — 

He thinks, for a moment, that he should be praying, but he can form no words. He's not even sure who he would pray to. The Maker, who is absent? The elven gods, whom the Chant calls false, and who are also silent?

If he were someone else, he would perhaps care about the gutted architecture, the stone that has melted down to slag. He would try and retrace what must have been beautiful soaring columns, the sparse loveliness that only comes with something surviving the ravages of time.

But he can be no one but himself, and what he sees most of all are the people. Or, what used to be and are honestly almost unidentifiable as people. They are charred husks, open-mouthed in what must have been the final throes of something truly agonizing. Everywhere he turns, he sees skin burned down until it's a thin, molten layer of blackened jerky over bone. Even now, what must be days later, the air smells of charcoal, roasted pig, and something faintly metallic.

As he moves through the burnt, broken remains, his ears begin to ring.

They trace through the half destroyed temple, until at last they reach what might have been its center. There's no telling. It's open to the sky, now. In fact, he can see little sign of any exterior walls, save the slaggy outcroppings. The snow has fallen thick on it, covering everything in a layer of white.

The Breach stretches out above them, an open mouth waiting to devour anything that gets close to it. Unfortunately, his metaphor rather makes the trailing ribbons of light that stretch down to a rift beneath it resemble, well, drool. He suddenly wishes he hadn't thought that.

Varric, at least, is more prosaic: "The Breach is a long way up," he says, with a low whistle.

Before Zevran can point out that they have no ladders, and how sad it makes him, Leliana joins them. She has her bow out and an arrow to her hand. "You're here. Thank the Maker. What soldiers remain are outside the temple, ready to deal with anything that might escape."

Cassandra nods. "Leliana." She casts a practiced eye about the room, and then says, "Have your men take up positions around the Breach."

Leliana does so with a few swift signals of her hands. She never quite points, but they all seem to get the message, because they all salute and begin heading to good spots for archers, and a few good places for swordsmen to join the fray on the ground.

"This is your chance to end this," Cassandra says to him. Her face is grave, and her voice resonant in the stone space, despite all the snow. He can't help but notice the play of green light reflecting in her eyes. "Are you ready?"

"That depends entirely on whether you have a ladder," Zevran says. "Even if I cannot reach it, I will try my best."

Solas moves ahead of them for a moment, looking between rift and Breach. At length, he says, "The rift below us was the first. Heal it, and you may be able to seal the Breach. First, though, you will have to open it. It has… fallen dormant, and cannot be sealed in this state."

"That means demons!" Cassandra calls, and Zevran notices the very slight hint of a wince from Solas. He says nothing, though, even as Leliana calls out, "Be on guard!"

After that, there is nothing for it but to trek through this strangely shaped, hollowed space.

Every so often, he sees glints of red amidst the gray-black and the white, like drops of blood.

Zevran steps on one of the red shards, nearly slipping on its smooth surface. He kneels carefully, reaching out with the fingers of his ungloved left hand.

"Don't touch it!" Varric hisses. "That's red lyrium!"

"This is the famed red lyrium of Kirkwall?" Zevran asks, reaching out anyway. He doesn't actually lay his fingers against it, but the air around it feels warm. Does regular lyrium produce heat? He's never noticed such a thing in the lyrium draughts Sens sometimes makes for herself.

"Yeah, it is. Which means it's dangerous, and I want to know what it's _doing_ here." 

Zevran almost turns around to look at the dwarf. There's an edge in his voice that, in anyone else, might mean something like panic, but Zevran doesn't think that's it.

"It's possible," Solas says, "that the massive amount of magic here drew on lyrium beneath the temple. Corrupted it."

Varric's voice is grim as he says, "Corrupted is right. The stuff's evil. Try not to go near it."

They haven't gone much further when, out of absolutely nowhere, a voice booms, "Now is the hour of our victory."

Varric actually jumps, levelling Bianca, while Cassandra unslings her sword, most likely in the grip of the same reflex that has Zevran unsheathing his daggers. 

"What is that?" Zevran demands. "Where did it come from?"

Solas hasn't even reached for his staff. He tilts his head, evaluating. "At a guess," he says, a little slowly, as if he's still mulling his theory over, "that's the person who created the Breach. This is most likely an echo."

Yes, places where the veil is weak tend to hold onto those. This, he has seen, and more than once. He recalls the orphanage in the Denerim Alienage, but even Soldier's Peak had — and still has, occasionally — such problems. They have mostly laid Sophia Dryden and her failed revolt to rest, but sometimes, at the wrong time of night, he's caught glimpses of Wardens long dead, in armor they don't wear any longer.

"We should keep moving," Cassandra tells him.

Zevran sighs. He doesn't bother putting his daggers away; he's going to need them soon enough, anyway.

When he's just a few paces from the key rift, the world around him — changes. A dark shape springs into view, shadowed, with eyes that glow red. Rather heavy on the villain symbolism, in his opinion, but at least it speaks with a voice that isn't his.

"Keep the sacrifice still," the dark figure says.

Much clearer is an old woman in ornate Chantry robes, pinned with her arms spread wide. Zevran must assume she is the Divine. No mere Grand Cleric would dare wear that much gold brocade.

He stares at the vision before him, more interested in determining the spell, and how any of this is even happening, than in this echoed Divine's pleas for help.

The sound of what must be his own voice — the accent is right, though the tone sounds almost alien to his ears — intrudes.

"You know, that magical rope trick looks quite interesting. You're going to have to share it with my wife."

Honestly, this echo of him sounds emotionless, uninterested in what's happening. He doesn't even sound curious, or like he's enjoying the joke.

"That was your voice!" Cassandra says to him, while both Solas and Varric exchange a look. Varric's face has crumpled in that particular way that means he's trying to stifle a laugh. Solas's smile is in the corners of his eyes, but there nonetheless.

Cassandra continues her thought with, "Most Holy called out to you!"

She most certainly did. Zevran says nothing, watching the dark figure. In the illusions, it straightens up, pointing past the Divine with a hand that looks gnarled and clawlike.

"We have an intruder! Kill the elf!"

Zevran sighs. "It's always 'kill the elf.' Why can't it be 'kill the Antivan,' or 'kill that devastatingly handsome fellow?'"

Cassandra rounds on him. " _That's_ what you're concerned with? Not who attacked the Divine? Not whether that vision was true or not?"

Zevran turns to look at her for a moment before he says, "I've been around enough magic to know that no vision from the Fade is 'true.' The Fade is a place of dreams, not some dry history book written by a lonesome scholar."

Also, he's always found it fascinating how so many seem to notice his ears before his knives, and discount the wrong one because all they see is the other. It worked to his advantage, in Antiva. It still works to his advantage sometimes in Ferelden, if people manage to forget what he does for entertainment and the occasional barrel of rare brandy. It works best of all if they forget just who he's married to.

"It is an accurate enough echo of the events that happened here, however, just prior to the opening of the Breach." Solas's expression is carefully neutral. He gives no hint as to what he's thinking. If he objects to Zevran's explanation — little though Zevran has managed to explain — he gives no hint of it.

He moves toward Zevran, and Zevran forces himself not to tense. He doesn't generally mind touching, and Solas is, if not handsome by Antivan standards, certainly _striking_ , but he can't help thinking of his hand as an injury. And he learned too early and too often that allowing others near his wounds was a bad idea. Much better to conceal them and tend them himself.

Solas does not touch him. Instead, the mage looks between the rift in the air and the green light shining on Zevran's hand, and then says, "Can you not open it?"

Zevran reaches out. The burn begins, though slightly more distant.

"Focus on the sensation," Solas says. "Stretch your mind toward the rift, and command it _open_."

He is not, by and large, a commanding person. He has learned to lead in these last ten years. Has learned to draw conclusions and make priorities and take care of others. But the sharper side of leadership, the whipcrack in the voice and the demand of obedience, these are not things he's used to.

Perhaps because she grew up commanding the world about her to change, Sens has always excelled at giving orders with the full expectation they would be followed. That Alistair had cast the weight of wardenship upon her shoulders at every opportunity likely helped.

It is Sens he mimics as he focuses on the rift. He feels something that is within his hand without being part of his hand _flex_ , and then the world changes.

It does not change for the better.

The illusion vanishes, but he can feel something aware gnawing on the edges of the world, pushing its thoughts in little teases through the hole that the rift forms. Feeling at its edges like fingering a woman. The metaphor falls apart when the consciousness shoves itself through the rift — 

And is a Pride demon. Of course it's a Pride demon. It's big, it's purple, it's horned, and Zevran spares a moment to wonder how Leliana suckered him into this. For that matter, how did Alistair talk him into skulking around the shadows of the Conclave, snatching up secrets and finding little pebbles of truth to carry back to his King?

Zevran's immediate response to the appearance of the demon is to sprint in the opposite direction. He swears he can feel Cassandra glaring at him, but that thing is too big and too nasty for him to take head-on immediately.

He's not the only one with the good sense to maneuver for a better position, as Varric also starts sprinting. As a crossbowman, he assumes Varric seeks cover.

But all Zevran needs is a few moments out of sight. Even demons such as this can, like humans, be persuaded not to see him, even as they remain convinced that they see all on the battlefield.

Once he's vanished from sight, he makes his way unseen to stab the demon in the back of its leg. He moves swiftly, plunging both daggers into what might be its knee. He seats them fully and then jerks hard, twisting. On a human, he'd only need one dagger for a good hamstringing.

The Pride demon twitches its leg, irritated, but doesn't even bleed. Zevran considers that he has possibly not severed even one of the tendons in that leg. Half-hamstringings are such a shame, really. He pulls the knives free and plants them a second time, going for the unmarred parts of its flesh before he twists and jerks the blades.

The demon roars, and then the world changes again. Its skin begins to thicken, even as Zevran tries to work his daggers free of it. He actually resorts to planting his foot on it and _yanking_ at one point. He staggers backward, very nearly overbalancing, once he works the damned thing free.

"It must be weakened!" Cassandra calls out.

That much seems obvious. But how is he, who is not even a mage or a templar, to manage it?

"Disrupt the rift!" Solas calls.

The demon pulls a new trick out of thin air: it snaps its hand out in a sweeping gesture, and lightning trails in an arc, like a whip. Another trick he'll have to tell Sens about, at some point.

Once again, he backs away out of sight. This time, he raises his unprotected left hand and focuses on the rift, pushing and pulling at it with his mind. It doesn't want to close, exactly, but it can be dampened, like throwing a heavy log upon a struggling fire.

The Pride demon roars fury across the clearing, and Zevran immediately tries to duck out of sight again.

Cassandra and a few of the soldier start forward, drawing the demon's attention away from him.

He slips back into the fray, once again creeping up behind the demon. Once again, he stabs at its leg, slamming both daggers down and ramming them home. He saws them through the thick, strange skin, and this time, he hears the faint noise of flesh tearing.

Another furious howl seems to rattle the world around them, but Zevran is already moving backward, waiting for a time to strike. Flights of arrows sing through the air, the pointy tips digging into it. He watches as the leg gives out under the monster's weight.

He buries both his daggers in its back, and combined with Cassandra wailing away with her sword and Varric firing crossbow bolt after crossbow bolt, while Solas calls lightning from a snowy sky, it seems to do the trick. Easier than the last Pride demon he fought, at least.

On the other hand, this one, too, explodes into ash. It rains over the clearing like a new sort of snow. It gets in his mouth, covers his arms to the elbow. He doesn't bother dusting it from his skin, but it's instinct to try to find something clean on himself to wipe at his daggers with.

"Now!" Solas calls to him. "It must be now! Before others sense a way through!"

Zevran lifts his left hand to the rift. He closes his eyes, brings his will to bear the same way he might unsheathe a sword. This rift will close. It must close; he demands it. It will seal itself, and take its misbegotten Breach with it.

His hand begins to burn. Not the over-sensitive feeling, though he is all too aware of the cold, of every snowflake that lands on his skin. But a burn so hot, so red, that he has to open his eyes and look down, make sure that he has not started to bleed, or that he has not somehow caught fire.

Green light pulses, insistent. He gives up this thought of using it silently. Instead, he curses it, orders it, cajoles in two languages.

 _Just close_ , he tells it. _Go. Little, and less, until you're nothing._

Like a recalcitrant whoreson who doesn't know what's in store for arguing with his training master, like a child insisting he's not tired even as his eyes droop, the hole in the world slowly begins to knit itself back together. It's a searing agony that claws at the sky above them, the ground beneath them, the air between, but it's a searing agony that is, piece by piece, falling quieter.

It feels like it's taking his arm with it. The pain is almost maddening. He has to clench his jaw, bite his cheek bloody, to keep from screaming. It's like passing his whole arm through Andraste's pyre, if her pyre had also been made out of tiny, serrated knives. He's aware of his fingernails, and how very much he wishes he didn't have them, because that would be one less thing attached to his skin.

But he was a Crow, once, and he was well taught. He can outlast this foolish child of a rift, can turn the key in this lock even if it poisons him with every moment he touches it.

He sees something green wink out, and feels the world change in a burst of light, and color, and the light and the color are just a new form of torture.

Zevran grits his teeth and tries to hold onto consciousness. He has lived through worse; he can endure this. What is pain to a Crow?

The world ceases.

**Author's Note:**

> So, my mother passed away at the beginning of this month, and like a _totally normal_ person, I have been channeling the resultant emotions into _this_ monstrosity. Don't expect updates until April at the earliest; I'd planned to take some time off even before February decided to be the _worst_. So now I get to channel all my... whatever... about my mother into writing original manuscripts.
> 
>  
> 
> I am 90% likely to come crawling back to fanfiction within two weeks. If you see me, slap the hell out of me.


End file.
